Tag: Fear of death

Getting to Yes

Rita Sommers-FlanaganLeave a comment

On one of my all-time favorite British sitcoms, The Vicar of Dibley, there was a character who answered any inquiry with no, no, no, no, no, no, no…. Then his oppositional stuttering would shift abruptly to something like, “Yes, sounds good.” This made the vicar roll her eyes and the audience laugh. Every time.

That sums up my relationship with my Coauthor fairly well. I look at the deep divisions in the world, the absolute necessity of being loving and forgiving, shake my head, and say No, no, no, no, no. Then I breathe, consider the options, and say Yes. Not because anything looks or sounds all that good. It’s just that Yes is the best answer available.

And the audience laughs. Every time.

The vultures laugh. The sparrows laugh. Friends and enemies laugh. The feasting deer lift their heads and laugh. Secure in the lap of forever, the souls of the brutally departed laugh. Fire-setters, firefighters, funeral directors, midwives, engineers, artists, jailers with rings of keys, pilots with bombing planes, producers of poison, planters of organic seeds.

Laughing. Every time.

But what’s so funny? The knee-jerk string of NOs? The pivot to YES?

“It’s all funny,” my Coauthor says. “Every bit of it.”

“I beg to differ,” I say.

“Of course you do,” my Coauthor chuckles. “See? Now, go ahead and get to yes.”

 “No, no, no, no, no,” I say, shaking my head.

“There’s a Yes in there somewhere,” God insists, sneaking toward me with tickle fingers, making ridiculous, nostril-flaring faces, tossing popcorn in the air to catch in his mouth—the Clown of Heaven, the Fathomless Fool.

“YES!” I yell. “Stop! You’re absurd.”

“No,” God laughs. “No, no, no, no, no.”

“Very funny,” I say. “Now, go ahead and get to yes.”

“Already there,” God smiles. “C’mon in. I’ve got wine and fresh bread.”

The Yes propels me forward. I take my place at the table and break the loaf open, crusty and warm. The wine is bitter, but there are carrots sweetened by the frost and a steaming cup of tea. I am grateful despite the costs and challenges in such wanton communion.

“Yes,” I say, soberly, allowing my eyes to see.

“Yes,” God nods with compassion.

And the day begins. It will be filled with divine comedies, embodied tragedies, the futile and the fulfilling. Most of the doors will be left unlocked, swinging freely in the wind.

Blurred Boundaries at the Queer Bar

Rita Sommers-Flanagan4 Comments

“None for me, thanks,” God says, when offered the security of a few defining boundaries. We’re at a queer bar. In the laughter, music, and seductive light, fireflies dart among those soon to fall. Approaching the revolving door, there’s a howling madman with guns and guns and guns. God runs her fingers through newly permed hair.

“We aren’t safe here,” I whisper.

“We aren’t safe anywhere,” God whispers back. “Relax.”

The beautiful, playful Embodiment raises her glass and winks. Hatred is creating cracks in the foundation beneath us.

“I’ve worried about you most of my life,” I tell her. “You indulge in too many altered states. You’re flimsy, malleable, and easily abused.”

God’s face breaks into a familiar hand-in-the-cookie-jar grin. “Well, at least I’m not gullible. My odds aren’t great, but that’s never stopped me from being true to myself.”

The cracks widen. Suddenly, we’re floating under an oil slick, auditing the military-industrial complex. We’re buying digital currency, baking sourdough bread, digging out from a mudslide. A child has won an assault weapon in a lottery, and ammunition is raining from a thunderous sky.

“This isn’t real,” I shout at the Body trampled by a stampeding crowd.

“Too real,” the Body shouts back, but the message is garbled. Her jaw is broken. This will make it even harder to discern her voice, and I am afraid.

“Fear not,” God declares with bravado. “I can teach you sign language. And I’ll be with you always, even to the end of the age.”

“Of course you will,” I mumble. “And that’s what I fear the most.”

“The end of the age?” God asks. “Or me?”

“Both.”

The war is vicious. The outcome, assured. As I untangle strands of vain longings and false hopes, God teaches me the signs for wonder, love, compassion, and peace, and we use them to order another drink. She sips through a paper straw.

I lean across the table to dab dried blood off her chin. My dampened handkerchief gathers the red and transforms into bolts and bolts and bolts of satin, the kind they use for lining coffins.

“I wish I could die innocent,” I say, gazing at God’s mangled face. I will always watch this face and try to wipe the blood away. But I will not die innocent.

God nods. “You should forgive yourself. Dying forgiven is better than dying innocent anyway.” She touches her chest and then mine, and we wait, knowing the music will eventually begin again.

Thin Ice

Rita Sommers-Flanagan3 Comments

My religious friends keep warning me that God and I are skating on thin ice. Especially when God names himself Prostitute or Fat Boy. Especially when she manifests as many, and the guarantees are few. We shrug. It’s what we do.

A man named Mick once told me that our postings make him laugh until he cries. He was puzzled as to why. He reads them every Sunday in an alley where an apple tree drips fruit to no avail, and he sips a yellow beer for communion.

The peyote that is God brings paralysis. The river that is God brings release. It’s the author God who writes you using metaphor and mint, drawing symbols in the sand for your protection, throwing ashes to the wind to guide you home.

We are mostly made of water: a fluid interaction between energy and thirst, a form of transportation, a sacrificial lamb. A sheer veneer of ice embodies danger with a certain kind of grace. But the pace of truth exhausts me, and I’m tempted to give up.

God removes his mittens. Offers me bare hands. The crowd of God applauds as I stand on shaky skates and push off using boulders and other people’s dreams. The sheen of God beneath me, the sky of God above, I am hypothermic mercy and cold, defiant love.

My remaining bones grow brittle with God’s blessing. I no longer take the time to make my bed. God shakes her head. When salt dissolves in water, ions form electrons, positively charged. With saline in my veins, the poison makes a promise that I’ll live another day.

Fat Boy tries to juggle. My Prostitute wears pink. She says, “Look at me, I’m funny, and when I’m cold, I’m slick.” But when I look, it’s only water and a wiser way to die. There’s thunder in the distance. And like Mick, I start to laugh. Until I cry.

Editing

Rita Sommers-Flanagan14 Comments

Few writers love the editing process, but it’s a necessary tedium. The English professor on my dissertation committee marked ninety-three comma errors in my first draft, but as my co-author, God rarely has the patience to look for comma errors even though the need remains. She excuses herself, citing the liberating Japanese philosophy of Wabi Sabi: the mistake, the flaw, the imperfection becomes the passageway to a deeper understanding of perfection. I don’t like it. There are things I need to articulate, and I could use some skilled but kindly help to do it well.

The grandchildren visited for the weekend. The youngest fought the haze of sleep while I sat on a stack of pillows, providing what safety I could. In a voice softened by the mystical quality of those entering the other realm, she murmured her final conscious thought. “I want my mommy,” she said.

It wasn’t a full-throated protest or a ploy to stay awake. It was the final whisper that defines us all. Her eyes closed, and her body relaxed. My heart ached as I watched her sleep. I want my mommy, too. Not my real, deceased mother—the one who tried hard but sometimes failed. No, I want the perfect mommy.

“But what about me?” God said as she slipped into my head. “Am I not the mother of which you speak?” She was joking around like people do when they’re sure of themselves.

“No,” I told her. “No, you’re not.” I felt mean as I said it, but honestly, I have no time for this.

She might be perfect, but the way we interact is not. Her editing is whimsical, her grip on reality questionable, her motives often unclear. Not the mothering I imagine at all. “It’s complicated,” I hastened to add. “It’s not entirely your fault.” But it was too late. Her indignation seethed, and a torrent of grief swept over the face of the earth. Sea levels rose, and the dark wings of the birds of prey covered the sun. A bitter ending was palpable on the near horizon.

“Wait!” I said, “I’m sorry. I meant to say that you’re not what I expected, but you’ll do. You’re a pretty decent mother as mothers go. You’ll do.”

“But you can imagine better?” God countered, eyes boring through my body to the eternity at my back.

Ah, what to say. What to say. What to think. Could I imagine better? Was this a trick question? Was there any way out? I froze.

“C’mere,” God said. The waters receded. “Enough. You need some rest.” She motioned me to a soft, dark place.

I don’t know what I whispered as I fell asleep, but I know God stayed awake, sitting uncomfortably nearby. And honestly, what more can I ask?

Lists

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

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There are so many things on my list today: Paint the coffee table orange; bake the leftovers with lots of cheese and spices to disguise the blandness; locate the next hot yoga class and begin making excuses for not going; do some laundry at somebody’s house; get out of my pajamas; buy a carrot peeler and cabinet knobs; make a cameo appearance in the happiness class; check my email; watch it snow.

But the snow stopped. The knobs are the wrong color, and bland isn’t always bad. The time on my hands is faintly bioluminescent, but there isn’t enough light to do anything but pray, palms together, a gesture of peace. Gratitude. Acquiescence. This, while the world has sunk so deep into the chaos of self that no one can tell an enemy from a friend. The bottom lines have given way. We’ve fallen through. Again.

Generally, solitary confinement is a form of punishment often classified as torture, but solitary confinement of the soul is a necessary discipline for recalibration. For close encounters. For unwinding the knot. Time to let the long tongue and wagging tail of the ever-eager God cleanse the wounds and loosen the grime of everyday life.

But God is not a dog today. Her calendar is filled with boring meetings, delicate negotiations, and a stint of volunteer work at the homeless shelter. She’s doing a reading tonight that will likely be well-attended—I’m glad for her, but I’m jealous. I don’t like waiting on such a busy God.

To my great delight, there’s a glimmer of God in the corner. She shakes her head as I try to snuggle in. “Not now,” she says. “You need to wait.”

“No!!” I wail, “I hate waiting. It makes me very, very anxious.”

“Sorry,” she says. “But you can do it. I’m counting on you.”

“Counting on me to wait?” I ask, stalling, pretending not to know.

“You can’t trick me,” God says, fading.

“Yes I can, yes I can, yes I can,” I yell to the Great Disappearance.

I tell myself I’m lucky she stops by as often as she does, but that’s not how I feel. The time on my hands has turned blood red, and my fingerprints are everywhere. “Get centered,” I tell myself. “You’re making a mess.” Waiting is a transformative torture. The long way home. I feel like a fool when I wait. I picture God, busy dishing up soup, teasing the tattered men with her sexy winks, her arms slung around the shoulders of women, repeatedly stoned. That’s how it is. She’ll come by later, and I’ll rub her feet.

Not My Idea

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

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“You realize America was not my idea, right?” God said. It was more a statement than a question—a comment likely brought on by my sense of alienation and dismay at our current national struggles.

“Duh,” I answered. “That’s painfully clear. I’m not blaming you.” I was washing the dishes with hot, soapy water. “It wasn’t my idea either,” I added.

The radio was on in the background, the ongoing absurdities in the news were ruining my evening. When you’re chatting with God, perspectives shift. The phrase “America First” is revealed for what it is: a puny, frightened declaration of selfishness that flaps defiant and pathetic in the gentle breath of God.

“You know we’re a defective species, right?” I said. I was in a very bad mood.

“Duh,” God answered. “That’s painfully clear.” God began drying the plates with little microbursts of warmth. “And I don’t blame you,” God added. “The blame game is a real dead end. Better to focus on hope.”

“Easy for you to say,” I said. “I got nothing.”

“Well, I think there’s a chance you’ll figure it out,” God said cheerfully. “You people divide yourselves up in the oddest ways. I admire your ingenuity, though it’s tragically misused. The us/them game is far more dangerous than the blame game. But…maybe, maybe. I don’t know. Maybe you’ll realize how damaging these artificial divisions are and stop scaring the pants off yourselves all the time.”

I thought about my fears and my meager progress at overcoming them.

“How’s your throat?” God asked. John and I had just spent six hours driving across the state in the smoke-infused cab of an old box truck we temporarily acquired as an act of charity. Or at least that’s what we think we did.

“Sore,” I answered. This was true. My head hurt and my clothes smelled atrocious.

“Kindness has a price tag,” God said. “Love is messy. Sometimes ugly. Sometimes deadly.”

I’d had enough. “God,” I said in the most patient voice I could muster. “I’m sorry, but I’m not in the mood for this. I’m tired. I feel sorry for myself. It’s cold in here, and I’m homesick for my younger self, when optimism was easier and endings weren’t so often or so clear.”

“I hear you,” God said. “I’m actually not in the mood either. I’m lonely and much older than you can even conjure. Very little agrees with me. Nothing tastes quite right. I’m often as miserable as you are. And for me, there’s no such thing as an ending. Maybe you should be grateful.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “But I’m not.”

We gave each other a halfhearted hug and parted ways–meaning I shut down while God expanded into the ink-black ocean of all that has ever been. I slept soundly in a threadbare hammock suspended between finality and the eternal. Not safe, but somehow, secure.

The Way of All Flesh

Rita Sommers-Flanagan6 Comments

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“Um, God,” I said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you…”

I saw no way to ease into this topic, so I gulped and blurted. “I intend to end my life if I think it’s time.” My bravado belied my queasy stomach, but I don’t know why I bother to put on airs like that. God sees right through me.

“I know,” she said, almost tenderly. “And that’s an adaptive way to deal with your fear and sadness. A mental escape hatch.”

“So you don’t mind?” I asked. “You don’t care if people kill themselves?”

“Depends,” God said. “I care enormously about your suffering. I suffer with you.”

“I’m not suffering right now,” I said, ever the defensive, egocentric one.

“Then why are we having this conversation?” God asked.

My words tumbled out. “Because of the enormous pressure people feel to stay alive. To defend life at all costs. To survive. To frame death as the final defeat. They pin it on your will. Like when people finally die, it’s ‘God’s will’, or when they live, it’s ‘God’s will’. But then, somehow, it’s our job to keep inventing ways to prolong our lives, and no matter what, we eventually die, and sometimes, slowly, painfully, and without any brain left.”

God gazed out the window. “Scary,” she finally said, mostly to herself. “Expecting conscious mortals to make compassionate decisions…sometimes I wonder if I’m asking too much.”

“Compassionate decisions?” I echoed, thinking, “Could she possibly mean that choosing death, ending a life, could be a compassionate decision?”

The Eternal Allness, the Beginning and the End, the Ever-present Force, the Planner, Sustainer, Granter, Architect, Experimenter, Lover, Truster, Sufferer, Giver, Taker, Saver, Waster—my side-kick and nemesis—smiled like a patient third grade teacher.

“Sobering, isn’t it?” she said. “But yes. You already consciously end millions of lives without compassion, out of greed, neglect, or fear. You execute. And you honor those who give their lives for others. You end the suffering of your beloved pets. You can’t excuse yourself from these contradictions, nor can you legislate them away. Here it is: Sometimes, in the larger scheme of things, choosing to end a life, even your own, is choosing Life.”

“Stop!” I said. I’d lost my bearings, overwhelmed with the wrenching images and conflicts. The dialectics of existence. Ending suffering. Murdering thousands. Politics and greed that result in starvation. The human capacity to grow food; invent medications; toy with life; dole out death. The human longing for perpetual youth. Slippery slopes and higher visions.

“No worries,” God said. “I’ll stop. But I’m not going anywhere.” She grew galaxy-big and atomic-small. She swam in a sea of amniotic fluid, danced a bone-rattling dance, died in the arms of a weeping father, and pulled the sky apart so I could see through myself. She wrapped the individually-beating cells of my heart around her little finger and licked the rings of Saturn like they were strands of taffy. She was being light and heavy, silly and serious. She was kaleidoscopically steady as she pulled the arms of morning around me. Not my morning—her morning.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she repeated, stroking my forehead. “And in a way you cannot possibly understand right now, neither are you.”